On this day in 1837, President Andrew Jackson appointed Alcée Louis La Branche to be the first diplomat from the United States to the Republic of Texas. As United States chargé d'affaires, La Branche...(Read More)

Contribute to TSHA
Today!

TSHA Portal to Texas History Archives

JALLOT, MEDARD

JALLOT, MÉDARD (?–1716). Médard Jallot (Medar Jalot), said to have been "the close companion, surgeon, barber, and valet of Louis Juchereau de St. Denis," was a son of Jean Jallot, a master surgeon who died heroically at the hands of the Iroquois in 1690. Médard Jallot's grandfather was Médard Chouart Des Groseilliers, an early explorer and one of the founders of Hudson's Bay Company and one of Canada's most respected men. His grandmother was a half-sister of the renowned Pierre-Esprit de Radisson. Jallot was one of three Frenchmen who accompanied St. Denis across Texas to San Juan Bautista in 1714. The other two were Pierre and Robert Talon (seeTALON CHILDREN), who as children had been among the Texas colonists of René Robert Cavelier, Sieur de La Salle. Jallot's precise role in the St. Denis expedition is not altogether apparent from the record. Like St. Denis's own exploits, his appear to have been somewhat overdramatized. Jallot "has been characterized chiefly through the imagination of historians rather than the facts of history." It is said that on several occasions he assumed the role of surgeon and that he had a passionate love for surgery. He, along with St. Denis, was a member of Domingo Ramón's expedition, which left San Juan Bautista on April 27, 1716, for eastern Texas. The next day, after crossing the Rio Grande into what is now Texas, he suffered a fall when his horse stepped into a hole. Although the extent of his injury was not apparent at the time, the accident proved fatal.

BIBLIOGRAPHY:

Jay Higginbotham, Old Mobile: Fort Louis de la Louisiane, 1703–1711 (Mobile, Alabama: Museum of the City of Mobile, 1977).